Tag Archive: Eric Clapton

So often times great art seems to come from people in a great deal of pain. You see it all the time with musicians…starving artists who put out phenomenal debut records, only to become mediocre once they start living comfortably. Well, Clapton never became mediocre, but he is certainly at his best here on this record when he was in a lot of emotional pain. Apparently this entire album was inspired by his future wife, Pattie Boyd. The only problem was that she was married to his best friend, George Harrison, at the time (I never realized Clapton had so much in common with Black Cloud before. Ahem.) So he channeled his feelings into this record, and the result is fantastic. Sure, eventually Harrison and Boyd split and she and Clapton got married. And sure Harrison was cool about it and even attended their wedding reception. But in the moment of this recording, Clapton was feeling the blues, and he got it all out in the studio. I actually like this stuff way better than Clapton’s stuff with Cream. That band veered too far into psychedelica for my taste, but this set is dirty and bluesy. Duane Allman contributes as well, which makes for some pretty stellar dueling guitar solos. I snagged this new for $13 at The Exchange in Willoughby last spring, and its been in pretty heavy rotation ever since. I never quite realized “Layla” had a 4 minute piano coda before…I guess I must just have been familiar with the radio edit.

Other Lists: “Layla” is #27 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Ch-ch-changes: This album fell two spots from its original position at #115.

My favourite track: “Layla”

Honourable mention: “Nobody Knows You When Your Down and Out”

Quote: “I got the key to the highway, billed out and bound to go. I gonna leave here running; walking is much too slow.”

I feel like I’ve been trying to find time to write on this blog for months, probably because it has been months since I picked up this album at Barnes and Noble for $5.99 with a gift card my former boss gave me for the holidays last year. But a brand new baby boy and a brand new house have been taking up most of my time these days. So now, on a Sunday, instead of watching the Browns lose their ninth game in a row, I am going to try to find time to write a bit. So yeah, I like this Cream (sh-boogie-bop) record a lot better than their first album. The first was a bit too psychedelic for me, but this album get more into riff rock and the blues. Sure, there’s still some mopey psychedelic tracks (“World of Pain”, “We’re Going Wrong”), and too many track sung by Jack Bruce, but overall, those songs make way for phat riffs (“Sunshine of Your Love”), driving rock (“Tales of Brave Ulysses”), and the electric blues (“Outside Woman Blues”, “Take It Back”).

So I remember getting into “Sunshine of Your Love” back in high school. We played it in marching band, and I dug it so much that I got the two-disc Eric Clapton live set, 24 Nights, mostly for the 9-minute live version. And I know I’ve talked about high school marching band before on this blog, it truly did have a big impact on my life. I’m pretty sure if it hadn’t been for band trips, I might never have left Northeast Ohio. But my freshman year we went to Gatlinburg, TN and my junior year we went to Disney World. Plus we had smaller trips to King’s Island my sophomore year and to Niagara Falls my senior year, and these trips helped me see that there was more to the world than just the shoreline of Lake Erie. And of course, some of the friendships I made in band have been the lifelong kind. I met Black Cloud when he and I were both 8th grade band helpers (is there anything nerdier on the planet than being an 8th grade band helper?) and even though the Last Boy Scout and I were already buds, rooming together for four straight years at band camp helped cement our friendship. Good times, yo. I kinda wish I had been able to continue marching band in college, but the TBDBITL didn’t have saxomaphones, so I was out of luck. And I think I was ready to move on as well, which is prolly why I became a choir director and not a band director (plus, it got me out of 16 years of Friday night football games).

Other lists: “Sunshine of Your Love” is #65 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Ch-ch-changes: This album fell two spots from it’s ranking of #112 on the original list.

My favourite track: “Sunshine of Your Love”

Honourable mention: “Tales of Brave Ulysses”

Quote: “You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever, but you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun.”

Wow. Other than playing lead on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on the White Album, this is Clapton’s first true appearance on the List. As prolific as he’s been for the last 50 years, I’m kinda surprised it took this long to run into a Clapton album. Of course, living here in the Capitol City, there are always rumors of Eric Clapton sightings. Supposedly his most recent girlfriend-turned-wife is from around here, and it seems like everybody but me has seen him doing laundry in the German Village or taking in a local rock show at the former Thirsty Ear. The more recent stories say he has a large house out in Dublin where he stays when they visit family, and apparently he fancies some sushi restaurant up on that side of town. I don’t know if any of these stories are true or not, but it is a cool urban legend to have one of the most influential guitarists of all time hanging out in your city. Although, I wonder when he visits he feels weird being only the second greatest guitarist in Central Ohio, after the great great Willie Phoenix, of course…

I kid. I don’t mean to take anything away from Clapton. He is one of the all time greats. His playing is lyric and bluesy, and he doesn’t rely on any gimmicks or effects…he just plays. This is Cream’s first album, and I went into it expecting some phat riff rock along the lines of “Sunshine of Your Love”, but instead its a mashup of psychedelic originals and blues covers. And honestly, I don’t really dig the psychedelic stuff (it pales in comparison to the Beatles and the Doors and other masters of the genre), but the blues stuff is really great…covers of Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters, some of the best that ever was. Cream was one of the first supergroups, but I’m not sure they had really gelled musically yet at this point. Ginger Baker’s drumming is powerful, Jack Bruce’s bass playing is tight and his harmonica solos are bluesy, and of course Slowhand’s leads are nearly flawless, but somehow it feels as if they are all competing against each other rather than playing together as an ensemble. I guess I’m just being critical…it’s definitely a good listen. I picked this up for $6.99 at the Half Price Books out on Brice Road one day after work this last school year, and it was worth the price of admission.

Other lists: Eric Clapton is ranked #2 on the list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists and #55 on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists. Ginger Baker is #3 on the recent list of the 100 Greatest Drummers, and the band Cream is #67 on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists (to my knowledge, Rolling Stone has not done a list of bass players yet…nobody loves the bass player).

Ch-ch-changes: This album dropped one spot from its original position at #101.

My favourite track: “Spoonful” (which was not actually on the original U.S. album release)

I’m a Tommy junkie. I have been since college. How did that come about? Well, the story kinda connects to another rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar. Back when I was a wee little boy, mi madre used to have Superstar on an 8-track. Later, when I was in high school, it had major revival due to the sudden popularity of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. We even did an entire competition show devoted to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music when I was a sophomore in the marching band, and we had a commissioned arrangement of “Superstar”. So I was into it, and the year after I graduated, the Ashtabula Arts Center was doing Superstar at their summer Straw Hat Theater. So I auditioned…and didn’t get in. I was bummed. Black Cloud got in. And some of my other friends. But not me. I was cast in Fiddler on the Roof, which I promptly quit.

But the next summer, I auditioned for another Andrew Lloyd Webber show, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and this time I got in. And that became my initiation into the Arts Center crowd, some of the most fun people I’ve ever hung out with, and I spent the next three summers of my life doing shows at the Arts Center, eating bread bowls (with ranch dressing) at Perkins, nightswimming at Walnut Beach, and generally living the bohemian, starving-artist lifestyle while I was home from college (I guess I pretty much lived the starving-artist lifestyle while I was in college too, but really, who doesn’t?). So how does this connect to Tommy? Well, the Broadway Musical version had just come out around that time, and all those budding young musical theater artists were Tommy junkies (and Rent junkies too). Always the teacher (and historian), I was quick to point out that it was based off a concept album by the Who. This remaster had been newly released, and I remember picking it up somewhere at a local record shop (one of the rare times I have paid full-price for a CD) so that we could all listen to the original. This was back in the days of the old Blue Bomber and the talking CD player (“HELLO-CD-PLAY”), and I have fond memories of tearing through the back streets of the Ashtabula Harbor while we all song rousing choruses of “We’re Not Gonna Take It”.

So there are three distinct versions of Tommy that I am familiar with: the original, the movie, and the Broadway musical. Each one has strengths and weaknesses, but I really do enjoy all three. There is a fourth version as well, performed with the London Symphony Orchestra and some pretty famous guest stars (Rod Stewart as the Pinball Wizard and Ringo Starr as Uncle Ernie), but it has been out of print for about 30 years and I have never heard it. Oddly, it is being remastered and re-released on 9/11/2015, so I’ll try to check it out and update this post afterward. But anyway, the general plot of the story goes like this: Man meets woman. Man lost at war. Woman has baby. Woman takes new lover. Man returns. Man kills lover. Boy witnesses lover’s murder. Boy retreats into self, essentially becoming deaf, dumb, and blind. Conventional treatments don’t work. Unconventional treatments don’t work. Boy shows aptitude for pinball. Frustrated mother smashes family mirror. Boy suddenly cured. Boy becomes celebrity. Boy becomes Messianic figure. Boy’s followers become disillusioned and leave. Boy finds enlightenment. End. Not exactly Shakespearean quality storytelling, but then again, neither was Ziggy Stardust or the Wall.

Let’s start with the original. It’s the best. ‘Nuff said. Moving on…just kidding. It is the source material, and the only version entirely performed by the Who, so it is the best. The songwriting really shines through, and of course, the Who plays extremely well together as a band. And the remaster that I have (I think its the ’96 version) really brings out the French horn in the “Overture”. Apparently the Who destroyed the master tapes after the initial vinyl pressing, so I was awhile before a quality CD version was released, but this one is real good. However, the plot is really hard to follow in the original version. Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend pretty much sing everything, but there is no distinction between the characters. Sometimes Daltrey is Tommy, sometimes it’s Townshend. Sometimes Townshend is the father, sometimes he’s the mother, sometimes he’s a relative like Cousin Kevin or Uncle Ernie. And overall, the vocals are pretty bland on this recording. Townshend’s voice is just too thin, and Daltrey hadn’t had the benefit of a million live performances to grow into the role yet.

Then there’s the movie, which is largely terrible, but the soundtrack is great. The movie itself tries to be psychedelic, but the symbolism is painfully obvious and it comes across as campy instead. The plot is solidified though, and they make the interesting choice to kill off Tommy’s father instead of the lover. This changes things dramatically, as the whole movie you get to root against the sleazeball lover (well acted, but poorly sung, by Oliver Reed). There is also a fantastic guest appearance (again well acted, but poorly sung) by Jack Nicholson as the Specialist who cannot cure Tommy (but hits on his mother). Elton John is hilarious as the Pinball Wizard, and Tina Turner rocks the house as the Acid Queen. Eric Clapton gives a surprisingly bland performance as the Preacher (changed from the Hawker in the original), but his guitar work is great. The real treat, however, is Daltrey’s performance as Tommy. By the time this movie was made in 1975, he had several years of live performances under his belt, and thus his vocals much more powerful and soaring than in the original recording. He simply owns the second half of the movie. And his acting is decent too. Unfortunately, the movie used quite a few studio musicians, and instead of orchestrations it gets really synthesizer happy at times. But Pete Townshend played on every track (except for “Pinball Wizard”…Elton used his own band) and it holds together.

And then there’s the Broadway musical. If you hate Broadway voices, don’t bother with it. It you can handle a good belting mezzo or a tenor with soaring vibrato, check it out. The Who doesn’t play anywhere on this record, but it was completely overseen by Townshend. He even wrote a new song for it (yes, it’s easily the worst song on the album). And the recording was produced by George Martin. Yes, that George Martin, the studio wizard behind Saints John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Don’t believe me? Listen to how the French horn flares shine throughout. It’s as if Tommy grew up on Penny Lane. Joking aside, I think it’s a pretty good rendition of the source material. The plot is as clean and tight as it’s ever been, and Tommy’s father is restored to his rightful place as the survivor of the fight with the lover. There is a lot of incidental music for dance numbers and scene changes that bogs it down a bit, and some extra dialog that is somewhat inane, but in the long run it’s more faithful to the original than the movie.

Other lists: See the entry for Who’s Next (#28) for the accolades Rolling Stone bestows upon the Who.

My favourite track: “Go to the Mirror”

Honourable mention: “We’re Not Gonna Take It”

Quote 1: “How can men who’ve never seen light be enlightened?”

Quote 2: “If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high, you’d laugh and say ‘Nothing’s that simple’.”